Our Old Fridge

After sixteen years our old Amana was noisy and hinting it was ready to retire. Not wanting to hustle for a new refrigerator while our dairy products curdled on the countertop, a few weeks ago we bought a sleek side-by-side number with the freezer on the bottom and a stainless steel finish. After we positioned it in the kitchen and admired it long enough, we wheeled the old one outside and deliberated what to do with it.

Benny wanted to sell it. "How much is it worth?" I queried. "A few hundred shekels? Let's give it away to someone who needs it." We agreed to put an ad in the paper; if no one bit we would find a worthy recipient. A few people called, one or two came by but in the end there were no takers. Meantime, we could barely squeeze past it to get in the front door and I was feeling like my space was infringed on. I pushed - it's a mitzva to give it to a needy family. Who should it be?

We both agreed that it won't be a charity organization. Although they all do important work, in Jerusalem most of the furniture and appliances donated to them wind up in the homes of ultra-orthodox families. With all due respect to their poverty, it is a lifestyle of choice for them. The ultra-orthodox opt to have extremely large families and to choose a lifetime of study over earning a living. The meager salaries that their overworked wives bring in can't possibly support families of this size adequately and they have developed into an extraordinary burden on the rest of us who work hard and pay taxes. And that's without mentioning that they're not even Zionists. They're definitely not getting my fridge.

"Let's call Haled," Benny suggested. Haled is a Palestinian of Bedouin origin who renovated our first apartment. A former policeman in the Bethlehem district, when the first intifada broke out in 1987 he quit his job for fear of being accused of collaborating with the Israelis and reinvented himself as a construction worker. A conscientious craftsman and a warm, genuine individual, we have remained in touch for many years even though Haled no longer has a permit to work in Israel and has fallen on hard times. We dialed his number the day after Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. The joy in his voice was palpable when he heard Benny.

"Happy Independence Day!" he called out.

Now friends, please understand that there are very few Palestinians who would use the words 'happy' and 'Israeli Independence Day' in the same sentence, let alone pronounce them with wishes of good tidings to their Jewish neighbors. For them, 'Israeli Independence Day' is synonymous with 'catastrophe.' It's something they say and then spit venomously.

So, how to explain Haled's heartfelt greeting? Nostalgia, I guess. A yearning for the days when there was no border between Israel and the West Bank, when everyone moved freely from one area to the other and a regular person could make a good, honest living to support his family. It is, of course, the nostalgia of a pragmatist - one who sees a certain futility in the years of struggle between the two sides, one who values economics over a complicated and problematic national liberation. One who views the birth of the Jewish state as the best thing to ever have happened around here. One in a million, maybe.

Now granted, Haled is a unique individual. He has great affinity for his Jewish neighbors, perhaps because he suspects his family has Jewish roots. During the worst years of the second Intifada he earned a few pennies by giving Hebrew lessons to people in Zaatra, his village. He's a good man. He loves us, and we love him. He was thrilled to receive the refrigerator and I was thrilled to be able to give it to him. (Hopefully it won't expire in the near future).

He couldn't come into Israel to pick it up so he sent some friends with entry permits.
"Haled sends his warmest regards," they said before they hoisted the fridge into the truck and drove away. Although the fridge appeared empty, it was really packed full with all of our best wishes, intentions and hopes.

Israel's 59th

Israeli Independence Day is my most favorite holiday on the Jewish calendar, so I'm always faced with a dilemma about working now. Invariably I find myself out on the road somewhere in Israel with a group, observing the rituals with host communities when I 'd really rather be at home in front of the television, steeping in the ceremonial services that so powerfully represent the reality of the modern Jewish state. This is particularly true for Memorial Day, which proceeds Independence Day. After the ceremony in the evening the tv channels are filled with stories about fallen combat soldiers and their families. While these programs are difficult to watch, they serve to directly connect those of us fortunate enough not to know bereavement with the haunting pain of those in Israel who have lost family members in war. These moments of visceral empathy deeply strengthen our connection to one another and perhaps are most palpable during the sounding of the memorial siren. As a native of a country 300 million strong, I am intrigued anew each year by the idea that an entire nation stops what it's doing to stand together for two minutes of silence in memory of fallen soldiers. Americans could never perform this feat - they're too disunited over too many issues. In fact, the same could be said about Israelis: is there any one thing we can all agree on? Standing in the middle of a busy street and watching everyone suddenly stand at attention when the siren begins to wail at eleven o'clock, I'm reminded that the acknowledgement of the terrible price we pay in order to be here is in fact the single idea that unites all Israelis.

I got a good dose of ceremoniality this year because I accompanied my group to the national service that marks the transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day. Broadcast live from Mount Herzl, only a few thousand guests can actually attend, so it's a treat to be there with the diplomatic invitees, the hot-shot Israeli politicians and all the other well-connected Israelis who wangle tickets. Last night as we were about to leave I discovered we had three extra tickets. I quickly called my husband and two daughters and told them to meet us at the entrance. I had to work hard to convince the girls, as they were still getting over their disappointment over missing a big concert near Tel Aviv . (The bus was meant to get back to Jerusalem at 4:30 am, which I was not happy about. My fellow Americans, Israeli teenagers keep obscenely late hours so we are constantly battling with them about what time to be home when they go. This time my husband convinced me we should give them a little slack and I reluctantly agreed. What a shame the tickets were all sold out!) I finally convinced them to come but they found seats a few rows away from us and pretended they were by themselves.

The ceremony follows the same formula every year and is an unusual bastion of formality in a culture that prides itself on informality. The army standards and the marching color guard, the speech by the speaker of the Knesset and the citizens chosen to light the torches are all beloved and respected symbols of Israel's sovereignty. Watching them each year reassures me that we are a member-in-good-standing of the club of normal, stately nations, although I'm always on the lookout for unique glimmers of Israeli-ness within the ceremoniality. This year I admired the female members of the Knesset Guard, who marched past us in above-the-knee skirts, strappy sandals and uzi submachine guns, and the Israeli war veterans dance troupe, who participated in the over-the-top, musical finale on their wheelchairs.

With all due respect to George Washington and the United State of America, the Fourth of July celebrations never moved me in the way that Israeli Independence Day does. The joy here is so real that I can reach out and touch it - and I do.

Lunch at Maxim's

Yesterday we took a drive up to Haifa with my mother to meet some friends of hers who live in the Galilee. After taking in the spectacular views from the top of Mount Carmel, all sixteen of us piled into our cars and reconvened for lunch at Maxim's restaurant at the bottom of the hill, overlooking the Mediterranean. Although this restaurant, a cooperative venture between Jews and Christian Arabs, is a popular eatery and the favorite hangout of the local soccer team, it is a household name in Israel thanks to a female Palestinian suicide bomber who detonated herself here on October 4, 2003, killing twenty-one people and wounding fifty-one.

It was impossible not to flashback to those dark, horrendous days as we ascended the steps into the restaurant. A security guard with an orange vest scanned each of us diligently with a detector wand, a procedure now waived by most of the complacent watchmen at the entrances to public places. "Keep up the good work," I nearly said, but then remembered that almost every customer that crosses the threshold here probably has a few words of advice and encouragement for the man responsible for our safety.

Throughout the meal I found myself imagining the scene moments before the explosion a few times, but mostly it was an ordinary gathering, with plates passed around, children tended to and snatches of conversation bouncing between the adults. A baby cried long enough for us to remark on the disturbance, and then was whisked out by his young mother. The younger children took turns on the empty seat at the adults' end of the table. The waiter brought a missing entree. All in all, an unremarkable experience.

Three and a half years after that infamous bombing and life has returned to normal. Israelis eat in restaurants, ride on public transportation and live lives that aspire to normalcy. Our experts have contained a grave threat to the personal safety of the citizens of the state impressively, and although our enemies never desist from their efforts to renew the violence, a certain kind of victory is evident here. The economy is flourishing, tourists are returning and the resilience gleams from every corner like specks of a broken vessel.

Yet, it's difficult to feel optimistic about the future. There are encouraging signals emanating from our neighbors but a realistic path toward resolution of the conflict is not yet in sight. Abba Even once said that even the absence of war here is an accomplishment, but somehow this tense quiet is not reassuring. With belligerent Hamas in control and an Israeli government wracked by scandals it's hard to imagine any serious progress on the road to where we all want to be.

But then again, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will peace be rushed. It will amble along when it's good and ready, perhaps taking us all by surpise. In fact, it could be any day now...

It's Passover Again

Living in Israel, it's impossible to ignore the crescendo of passover mania as the holiday grows closer. Each year I am astonished anew at the hysteria over food and cleaning. Two weeks before the holiday I was dismayed to discover that my favorite brand of brown rice was nowhere to be found in the supermarket. "It's because of pessach," the Arab stock boy explained to me, eyeing me incredulously, as if to ask, "what planet do you live on?"
"I guess I missed the boat, huh?"
He shrugged his shoulders and I kicked myself - who knew that brown rice was hametz? I would have stocked up ages ago.
I can live without brown rice for a few weeks but the problem was much more acute in the days when we had a cat. The first year Mashie came to live with us we ran out of Friskies during passover. I was stunned to discover that in the supermarket the cat food was taped up behind cardboard in the untouchable aisle. Who knew that even the cats in Israel keep kosher for passover? In a moment of criminal insanity I stuck my hand behind the barrier and sneaked a box out when no one was looking. Luckily the checkout girl didn't say anything, but it took me years to cleanse the guilt from my soul. (In fact, this is the first time I've confessed in public. Forgive me?)
(P.S. When Mashie scratched my infant daughter right beneath her eye we decided she had to go. She was adopted by Haled, the Palestinian contractor who was doing work on our house at the time. She went to live with his family in Zaatra, near Bethlehem, and never had to worry about keeping kosher again.)
The cleaning madness is a slightly more honorable phenomenon, if you don't mind waiting hours on line at the car wash. Pre-passover cleaning is actually a great time to hunt for abandoned treasures because the garbage dumpsters are full of salvagable junk people have tossed out. A dear friend of ours who shall remain nameless cleans her house once a year on passover - and that's it. The rest of the year her place is a pig sty. As for me, I'm not about to go searching the house for crumbs with a candle, but passover is a great excuse to get my two teenaged daughters off the couch and out of their television stupor. At this very moment they are cleaning the kitchen and internalizing the importance of family cooperation.
Chores and inconveniences notwithstanding, I love the practical applications of the passover story - all the ways we have to make the liberation and redemption of the Jewish people 3200 years ago a first-hand experience for all of us. I love the gathering of the whole family around the seder table and the centrality of the children in the re-telling of the story. I love the way we reconfigure the daily necessity of food to make it part of the experience of remembering. I love the ten drops of wine on the plate during the recounting of the ten plagues that remind us always to be compassionate toward our enemies. And I love the search for new relevance and meaning in this ritual every year. Once we were slaves and now we are free people, so it is our obligation to ensure freedom for all.
In addition to those who live within our midst without freedom, three Israeli families remain imprisoned in fear and anxiety while their sons continue to be held captive by merciless enemies. Indeed, we cannot truly savor our freedom as long as Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have not returned home. Hopefully this spring they will be freed and that beautiful passage from the Song of Songs will ring true: "...the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land."